And It All Goes Dark
by Rebecca Pierce
Summary: Maybe the sun had risen on the other side. Maybe there wasn't a cloud in that sky. Maybe her brother would walk into the room and tell her lying in a pool of her own blood was unbecoming of a lady. Either way, maybe then it would all make sense one day.
1. The Art of Death

**A/N: **An experiment for a possible story where things don't quite go as planned. As it goes on I'll make it clear which details changed and which stayed the same. Other than that, review and let me know if it is worth continuing. XD

**Disclaimer: **Tite Kubo owns my soul. T_T

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**And It All Goes Dark

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**

It all goes dark.

She's not sure how or why, but the moment she sees the skies darken she knows.

It's over.

War is never simple.

Even as the garganta opens and out comes a procession of the Espada with blood (red, so much red on white) she doesn't move. Even as the vice-captain of the fourth division is carted off screaming to her last breath, fighting vainly to return to her charges, Rukia Kuchiki does not stand (is a silent stone in a sea of madness), doesn't flinch. Even as they surround her and she shudders involuntarily at the feel of the deep pressure surrounding her, she doesn't let violet stray from the two bodies of her friends.

Even as they are slain in their sleep.

A monster comes to stand before her.

The deep irises seem to darken as she notes the different stages of drying blood on white—the newest, brightest, a trail splattering crimson petals and splashes like her brother's blade across the delicate looking cloth.

It doesn't take her more than a second to discern the ryoka boy's fate—their fate.

To feel, to remember the whisper of a breeze through bright orange is almost like a dream in that moment.

"What're we gonna do with her?" The familiar lilt sends a chill down her spine and it is only then that the fear begins to course through veins that but a moment ago were filled with numbing ice. There is movement, her limbs respond, and violet meets crimson.

Rukia knows this is the first and only time she will see those eyes so clearly, so vividly before she dies but try as she might she can't move, can't look away anymore and the snake slithers up her arm and into her black uniform (stained white by the sands and darker by the blood of those she knows, and those she would rather not have known) and it finds its way up to the thin white pillar that is her throat, choking whatever life, whatever little humane part of her remained.

She is but a quivering rabbit now.

"Do what you will." Is the even reply as if the man was being asked about furniture in the attic.

The snake hisses in her ear but she is beyond trembling and so she does nothing. Not when Gin shrugs nonchalantly, not when Aizen calmly turns his back to her and Gin gives nothing but a Cheshire smile over one shoulder, not even as the scrape of their sandals begins to put distance between her and their blades.

But maybe she did tremble just a little as she sees Gin stop and turn around.

"_Ikorose, Shinso."_

And yes, she definitely trembled when his blade pierced her heart.


	2. Fauvism

**A/N: **Never really written anything like this, so comments are appreciated. As for these chapters being short, there's method to my madness ;)

At least I hope there is.

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**Fauvism**

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There's supposed to be a heaven someplace, an orphan once told her, a place where things made sense and life carried on with food growing everywhere and people living in harmony. Maybe there would be homes or they would live among the animals, but at the very least they would walk free, unafraid, and certainly nowhere near the disease ridden hellhole that was one of the darkest sectors of Rukongai.

The boy was young of course, and learned quickly that dreams were snuffed out as easily as their own heartbeats—at least that was what his wooden cross on top of a secluded cliff told her.

She couldn't remember his name, but if she saw him now in a place other than her faded dreams, Rukia Kuchiki was sure she could point him out without hesitation.

He had a dimple on his left cheek that only showed with a full-fledged smile. There was a birthmark shaped like a crescent moon on the side of his right knee, and three scars running parallel on the back of his left shoulder blade from an encounter with a hollow where he had lost his first friend.

His hair was an untamed mass of navy blue and he blushed easily.

So, she asked herself (or him, she wasn't sure), was she in heaven?

Violet eyes opened slightly, a light protest escaping parched lips as she turned away from the piercing light that invaded the area.

A groan.

No, this certainly wasn't heaven.

Slowly, violet orbs adjusted and she realized she was in some kind of cave near the entrance. Before her was a single outline against the cave wall, revealed only because said being chose to have it so through movement-interest it seemed, in her. As she shuffled, dirt clogged her airways and she coughed, curling into herself at the pain that lanced through her weary limbs.

"Well, well, the princess chooses to awaken."

This voice . . . she's heard it before somewhere. A lilt filled with amusement and just a pinch haughty—she's heard it before somewhere but she can't remember where. There are things—memories, dreams, nightmares?—running behind the lids of her slowly blinking eyes, fading away before she can catch them to make any sort of sense and she forces herself to turn on the ground, dragging like a wounded animal.

And it's then that she feels it.

There's something _missing_. Maybe it was little, or maybe it was really big, but it's not there and there's something warm and wet in the white sands of the cave floor. Her fingers curl around the soil and she looks down at the little clump between petite fingers, and even in the shade of the cave she can see that the sands are stained with darkness that fills her nostrils with its smell.

With blood—her blood.

Panic is blinding.

Something is missing and it's something she had and she can't figure out what it is. What was it? Why does she need it so badly, _why_? Her pulse is erratic, blood is flowing, falling, filling crevices in both the sands beneath her and even her own body, choking, drowning her in what should've given her life.

Why is it gone? WHY IS IT GONE?

There's a man before her, standing tall, imposing, staring down at her drowning pathetic self and frowning. He is beautiful, regal, and certainly disapproving of the filth at his feet but before she could ask him for help he is gone in her mind, faded back, teasing her with his lack of presence.

The pain is too much—way too much and her eyes rise to meet the glowing ones of the shadow sitting primly by the cave entrance. Even from here, she can see his smile and it angers her that she's here, gurgling, choking on her own blood and he has nothing to say on the matter.

She can't make out his face from here but she glares for all she's worth, wishing him a painful death in her mind even as her chest spills more sickeningly onto the cave floor and she grunts at the waves of pain this brings. She can't decipher if it's her own hand clawing at the hole in her chest, can't tell if it's her own dirty nails scraping at the skin and dipped in the deep red that can't be seen as anything but black in the near darkness.

The panic is overriding the pain, or maybe it's the other way around, but somehow she finds the strength to drag herself forward and closer to the light. It is there then, at the man's feet that she finally collapses, curling up and screaming past the blood filling her mouth. Something is jerking her very soul out of the shell that is her frail body and it hurts beyond anything she could describe.

She's a million shades of pain past lucid as her stomach twists into a painful knot and something acrid forces itself up her esophagus. Shoudlers trembling, she opens her mouth and onto the white sands spills blood and something else that leaves a taste she doesn't recognize in her mouth. Acidic-burning flaring nostrils and there in all it's dirty glory, emptying her body of everything and anything she can't even remember having ever satiated herself with. Her whole body shakes as her stomach empties itself and hot tears spring to her eyes.

_Heaven doesn't exist!_ She wants to tell the orphan. _It never did!_

There's some of what she threw up leaving a trail down the side of her mouth and that's what alerts her to the change as she tries to wipe it away with the back of a pale hand. It's hardening, crackling against her skin and spreading, and even in her newly weakened state she claws at it weakly as it starts filling both her vision and spreading veins of itself into her nostrils. Looking down, she sees it intermixing with her blood, spilling a strange white and black liquid like a spring from the hole in her chest.

She can barely see now, barely convey the fear in her gaze. Her voice is muted by the liquid filling her lungs and freezing her voice box in place solidly, and tears openly fall against the hardening substance on her features.

Her lungs have stopped responding.

There's a little boy standing before his own wooden cross and waiting for her outside the cave entrance as she tries to scream one last time. It almost saddens her not to tell him her revelation before she finally loses her grip on reality.


End file.
